Nirvedh H. Meshram, Ph.D
Vulnerable carotid plaque can rupture and release emboli which can flow into the brain vasculature resulting in an ischemic stroke. Hence it is clinically important to identify plaques which are unstable and most likely to rupture. Currently, only the size of the plaque (stenosis) is used to decide if a clinical intervention like a surgery is required but many plaques which are not stenotic can rupture and cause a stroke. Hence our group utilizes ultrasound strain imaging to quantify the stability of plaque.
Strain Imaging is performed by acquiring multiple frames (video) of ultrasound images of plaque over one or more cardiac cycle. Cardiac pulsation causes the carotid artery to pulsate as well. We measure this pulsation over the cardiac cycle using image processing methods to estimate inter frame displacements. These inter frame displacements are then used to calculate strain which is a spatial derivative of the displacements.
Our current focus is on automatically segmenting plaques, improving the quality of the strain estimates obtained and using parallel computing to provide high speed clinically adoptable carotid strain imaging.
